1 Adventure

Kyleakin Scottish Sunset On the Isle of Skye

I took this wonderful picture about 9:30pm while I was at a pub in Kyleakin, Scotland. It is one of the most remote places in Scotland, being that one my own it took about 8 hours to reach on bus from Edinburgh. Very incredible place to visit and a lot of fun as well. Its been one of my favorite since the trip and I have it currently as my background on my computer.

If you would like to use this a background, see here to download a copy - Scottish Sunset on the Isle of Skye

Bye Bye Blog Spammers! 1Adventure Kills Spam Dead - New & Improved Features!

Title sounds like a Raid ad huh? LOL. Just wanted to mention and record some changes that have been going on behind the scenes here. In the past year blog spam and trackback has been an increasing difficult problem to combat on this blog. At first it was just a dribble of blog spam here and there that was easily deleted. Over time this daunting task became to much to handle. It was a painstaking process to hand delete each of the bad comments. It has gotten so bad that I had no alternative except to attack the problem and eliminate loopholes for spammers to infect this blog with selfish attempts at leaving links or notes in the comments of this blog. Problem solved. The fasinating part of all of this was that over the course of 6 months we received 11,000 pieces of comment spam! Likely target? Yes blogs are a very likely target these days. This blog was a likely target. Now not a single comment ever linked out nor did much good for those doing this. For them though that wasn't a concern as they use automated software programs to constantly hit blogs, often using proxies and untraceable ip address to circumvent any ip banning to keep them from coming back. A lot of blogs just filter out the spam. Many of spammer programs don't have throtting enabled either, meaning they just hit the blog as fast as they can finding any hole they can spam their referral link into. Bloggers often hit newer blogs or those blogs that they know can't do much about their attempts, or just whoever they decide its time to spam today. If a blog is no longer usable sometimes they eventually will stop and will go somewhere else. Yes, the internet can be a hostile place to hang up a shingle. If you are hearing any of this saga for the first time, then consider yourself lucky. Honestly blogging spamming is a poor profession integrity wise and it's parallel to theivery in my mind.

In any case, the blog was updated to the most recent version of MovableType 3.xx, big time anti-spam features, you may notice a few ads here and there. We are going to be testing these. Basically I need some help paying for the hosting. Which isn't much but anything helps. So far the ads aren't doing much, but hopefully they don't take away from the photography in any way. If you have comments on improvements you would like to see, let me know.

Crud War - Expressions of Fun

Crud War

This photo is by far one of my favorites recently. I can't stop laughing at how surprised and overjoyed they are at the same time covered in mud and enjoying it all. Awesome. No its not some beauty secret these girls are using. They are getting messy at a Crud War I was at recently in New Braunfels, Texas. Its bascially an all out food fight of sorts in an open field where you throw mud, cereal, wet grain, oatmeal, flour, and just about anything you can wet down in large quatities and throw at each other. If you've never done it, all I can say is that is pure messy fun.

Bo

This is a great shot I thought of Bo. Smiling, drooling, and very bright and alive. Beautiful kid.

Blooming Aspen Trees Colorado

I liked this photo, actually seeing it through the window on this sunny afternoon was more beautiful, but I thought the shot came out good, not great, but still nice.

Relaxing on Rendezvous Caye, Belize

How about this for a vacation spot? I went snorkeling in Rendezvous Caye during a vacation, it was quite beautiful and very far out.